Once a Father Read online

  She worked as swiftly as she dared, making the little boy as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, issuing orders to the two nurses who buffered her sides. They moved like a well-oiled machine. A machine whose only purpose was to help this small child who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Tracy checked her tears until after the job was over. Unleashing them wouldn’t do the boy any good.

  What the hell was taking so long?

  And what was he doing here, anyway? Adam wondered, exasperated with himself. This wasn’t part of his job. His job had ended the instant he had brought the boy out of the burning building.

  He paced the length of the hallway, his impatience mounting with each step he took. That was his job description, saving people from burning buildings, and he’d done that. End of story.

  So why was he here, pacing up and down a pastel-colored hallway, sweaty, sooty and smelling of smoke when he should be at the fire station, taking a well-earned shower and trying to wind down from a job well done?

  He had no reasonable explanation, even for himself. All he knew was that the frightened look he’d seen in the boy’s wide blue eyes when they had stared up into his had transcended any logic Adam could offer either to himself or to his superior when the time came.

  It wasn’t like him to get all wound up like this about someone he’d pulled to safety.

  And yet, here he was, wound up tighter than a timpani drum.

  The door opened and Adam snapped to attention, his body rigid. He was at the doctor’s side, his six-three frame looming over her five-foot five-inch one before the door had a chance to swing closed.

  Adam didn’t attempt to second-guess the expression on her face. “How is he?” he demanded.

  His tone had taken him out of the realm in which her assumption had placed him: that of rescuer and rescuee. For the firefighter to look so concerned, when rescuing people out of burning buildings was, if not a daily, then at least an occupational occurrence, there had to be something more going on.

  Maybe they actually were related somehow and for his own reasons he just didn’t want to admit it. Even given the boy’s age, there seemed to be no other explanation for why one of the county’s firefighters would have accompanied someone he’d rescued and then hung around the hallway, waiting to hear about his condition.

  She was too tired to make an educated guess and almost too tired to ask.

  Tracy pulled off her mask, letting it hang from its strings about her neck. “He’s still in shock. Pretty harrowing experience for a kid to go through. But his wounds aren’t quite as extensive or serious as they first appeared. I was afraid some of them were third-degree, but most of them are second-degree and some are even first.” She knew she didn’t have to explain the difference or the significance to this man. “But any number you assign to them, they hurt like hell.” Summoning her energy, she framed a question for him. “Is it true?”

  With everything that happened, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d done the boy a favor, saving him. The kid was in pain, about to undergo surgical procedures that were undoubtedly excruciating and the bomb had made him an orphan on top of that. It was a huge load for someone so small.

  He frowned. Adam had no idea what the doctor was talking about. “Is what true?”

  She had to concentrate not to wrap her arms around herself in a bid for comfort. Although she’d never been close to her, she’d lost her mother when she was twenty-two. It had hurt then. How much worse did it feel to be so young when that happened? And to be completely orphaned on top of that?

  Did the boy even know his parents were dead?

  Maybe she’d misheard. A glimmer of hope flashed for a moment. “You said his parents were killed in the blast?”

  The firefighter’s chiseled chin hardened even more. “Yeah.”

  She’d navigated life’s rougher seas by clinging to optimism. “Then I guess he was lucky.”

  While he’d waited, Adam’d had time to call back to the station house to tell them that he’d be at County General for awhile. McGuire had told him that according to the manager of the club, the boy had gone off to the men’s room minutes before the blast. The woman had volunteered that he was an only child. That left him alone.

  “Depends on your definition of luck.”

  What a strange, somber man, Tracy thought. She wondered if there was someone in his life, or if being alone had made him so bitter sounding.

  “I’d say being alive is lucky.” She glanced back toward the trauma room. She’d given the boy a sedative to help him rest. “Being alive is always better than the alternative.”

  Adam thought of his own life, a life that had been empty and bleak these past two years despite all the efforts of his siblings and extended family to bring him around. “I suppose that really depends on your point of view.”

  Turning toward him, Tracy studied his face thoughtfully. He was younger than he sounded, she realized. But his eyes were old. And angry. “Rather a fatalistic attitude for a firefighter.”

  He shrugged carelessly. “It’s what sees me through the day.”

  Tracy prided herself on being a decent judge of people. She’d sized him up and decided that this man wasn’t quite as emotionless as he would have liked to believe himself to be. If he were, he wouldn’t be standing here now, waiting to hear how the boy was.

  Playing devil’s advocate, she asked, “Then what are you doing here?”

  His expression became unreadable. “Seeing about the boy.”

  She wanted him to say why. “You saved him.”

  He wouldn’t have put it that way. “I pulled him out of the fire.”

  Tracy was far too tired to butt heads. “That you did, Mr.—?”

  “Collins. Adam,” he added after a beat.

  Adam was surprised when she put out her hand to him and then took his when he made no move to do the same. “Tracy Walker. You wouldn’t happen to know his name, would you?”

  He’d overheard the blonde with the listing beehive hairdo, Bonnie something he recalled, say the boy’s name when she was talking to the chief.

  “Jake Anderson, I think.”

  Tracy nodded, taking in the information. “Well, no matter how you choose to put it, Collins, Jake owes his life to you.”

  The boy didn’t owe him anything. It was he who owed the boy something for pulling him out of the jaws of death only to fling him back into a life that was filled with pain.

  He nodded toward the trauma room. “What’ll happen to him?”

  Tracy assumed the firefighter was asking about treatment.

  “Fortunately, we’re prepared for his kind of case here at County General. A lot of hospitals aren’t. We’ll see to his wounds, help him heal.” At least physically, she thought. “I might be wrong, but I don’t think any skin grafts’ll be necessary, so that’s good.”

  She didn’t look as if she should be dealing with things like burnt flesh and peeling skin. He could more readily see her indulging in a game of tennis or riding horses at the club, rather than leaning over an operating table trying to graft skin over a charred body. “And then?”

  She didn’t quite understand. “Then?”

  He was thinking about the orphan part. Where did Jake go after he was released? “After you do your job and he’s well, what happens to him then?”

  She paused for a second to think. “Social services, I guess, until we can locate a relative.”

  Adam had a bad feeling about this. “And if there’s no relative?”

  “He goes into the system.” Tracy crossed her arms in front of her, trying to get a handle on what was going on in Collins’s head. “Are you usually this concerned about people you save from burning buildings?”

  Adam had never cared for being questioned or analyzed. And he’d seen the woman’s tears just before she’d withdrawn into the trauma room. “Do you usually cry over your patients?”

  Tracy saw no shame in empathizing with her patients. Th
e way she saw it, it made her human.

  “All the time, Mr. Collins, all the time. When I can help them, when I can’t. And when I hear about a little boy who has lost the two most precious people in his life at such a young age.” She leveled her gaze at him. “What’s your excuse?”

  The woman’s very body language challenged him. Scooping up the heavy yellow jacket from the chair where he’d left it, Adam punched his arms through the sleeves and pulled it closed. “I’ve got to be going.”

  Rather than let him go, Tracy hurried after him. The man had done something sensitive, it hadn’t been her intent to chase him away.

  “Wait.” Adam stopped and turned around. Free of her surgical cap, her dark curly hair swirled around her face as she caught up to him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was being combative. It’s just been one of those very long mornings, that’s all. You were being a good guy, even if you weren’t being very communicative, and I was being—” Tracy paused and then smiled as she concluded, “Me, I guess. They tell me I talk before I think. Sometimes, they’re right.”

  His eyes narrowed. “They?”

  “My friends.” Her mouth softened as an almost pixieish smile graced her face. “You did good today, Adam Collins.” And then, because something told her that the words were more applicable to him than to the child she had just worked over, she added, “And no matter how black the situation looks, it’ll get better.”

  How could she say something like that? How could she believe it? Doing what she did, day in, day out, seeing what she saw, how could she possibly pretend to believe what she’d just said?

  The look he gave her made Tracy feel as if she were being X-rayed.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  She was a firm believer in meeting darkness with sunshine. “As sure as I am that God made little green apples.”

  His expression was incredulous. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I really don’t know, but I heard it somewhere and I thought it sounded nice.” She glanced at her watch. Trained pig or not, Petunia was going to start nibbling on the furniture legs any second now, if she hadn’t already. She was a good little animal, as obedient as they came, but she was a pig and pigs ate anything when they were very, very hungry. Tracy knew she’d more than exceeded her grace period with Petunia. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pig to feed.”

  The woman was beginning to sound positively weird. “Is that some kind of an encrypted message?”

  She cocked her head, as if to review her words and think. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “You have a farm?” That would be the logical explanation. The hospital was in the heart of town, but maybe she lived beyond the city limits and was going home.

  “No.” Her grin widened. “I have a pig. A very sweet little Vietnamese potbellied pig who’s as smart as a whip and right now, as hungry as a bear. I didn’t have time to feed her this morning and if I don’t get back to her soon, I might not have anything left in the apartment when I get home.” About to dash off, Tracy stopped abruptly as a thought occurred to her. “Do you need a lift?”

  Coming out of nowhere, her question caught him off guard. “What?”

  “You came in with the boy in an ambulance,” she recalled. “I don’t figure the paramedics hung around waiting for you all this time. Do you want a lift to your fire station?”

  He did, but he’d already decided to call a cab. Her offer, tendered so guilelessly, left him momentarily speechless. It just wasn’t rational. “You don’t even know me. Do you always give rides to strange men you don’t know?”

  She supposed if she had a choice, she would rather be too trusting than not trusting at all. “We both saved the same boy—in our own way,” she allowed. Her eyes smiled at him. They were hazel, with sunshine in them. “I know you.”

  He had no idea how to respond to that. With a shrug, Adam fell into step beside her.

  “How the hell did that bomb go off before they got inside?” Stone demanded of the short, squat head of security for the Lone Star Country Club. He towered over the older man who had once sent fear into his own heart. But that was back when he was a wet-behind-the-ears marine recruit. The tables had now turned. Now Yance Ingram reported to him. And the report wasn’t good. “I thought you said you knew what you were doing.”

  Yance tugged on the ends of his graying mustache, working to contain his anger. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to this way. “Don’t take that tone with me, boy. I wasn’t the one who screwed up.”

  Huffing his displeasure like a runaway locomotive, Stone circled around the offending man, one of his handpicked, chosen inner circle.

  Served him right for not seeing to it himself, Stone thought. But he’d deliberately left the details up to a select few, wanting to distance himself from the actual deed as much as possible. Blame had a way of smearing once it was voiced, and at all costs, he was trying to protect the sweet deal that had all but fallen into his lap at a time when he most needed it.

  Wouldn’t have needed anything if Susanne hadn’t turned out to be a first-class bitch, he thought darkly.

  It hadn’t been enough for her to up-end his life by divorcing him and taking away his daughters, she had to demand a pound of flesh from him as well. A monthly pound of flesh in the form of staggering alimony payments. It was like paying for a meal long after the dishes were cleared away. The alimony payments, on top of the child support he was doling out plus the alimony he was still paying to his first wife, had turned him into a man with his back pressed against a wall full of sharp, rusty nails. He was desperate.

  That was how El Jefe had found him, desperate. The self-proclaimed new kingpin of the Central American drug trade had a nose for desperate men who could be useful to him. The partnership they had struck up proved to be a lucrative one for both of them. Drug money came into the States, to be carefully banked and deposited via money orders into a bank account he’d personally set up for El Jefe’s legitimate holding company, Emeralda. The money went back to El Jefe for business transactions, minus a healthy cut for his part in the laundering.

  It enabled Stone to pay his debts, his monthly penance—alimony, he thought cynically, the wound that keeps on giving—and still have a nice piece of change to squirrel away at the end of each month until the day he could convince Joan Cooper to marry him.

  That was all he wanted, a fresh start with a good, decent woman and enough money to buy and sell this godforsaken little hellhole he found himself in charge of.

  But the operation required more than just his being involved. By its very nature, it required that he take men into his confidence to use as his soldiers. So he found them. Men he trusted as much as he was willing to trust anyone. They’d formed what he laughingly referred to as The Lion’s Den, taking the name from the pin the mayor had been awarding people within town for services rendered beyond the call of duty for the past ten years or so. Stone had taken to giving a pin of his own to the men he entrusted to serve him. The only difference being that the lion in his pin had three legs rather than four. The way the pin was fashioned, the difference wasn’t noticeable unless you were looking for it.

  That was how they all knew one another within this secret society of theirs. But Stone wasn’t some blind optimist, willing just to let things see to themselves of their own accord. He watched the men who held not only their fate but inadvertently his in their hands. Watched them like a hawk. Ordinarily. But this one time, he’d rested a little too easy, relying on Yance’s extensive expertise with explosives. There was supposed to be none better.

  All it had gotten him was two dead citizens and one possible live witness. None of whom had been his original target.

  Stone lowered his voice to keep it from carrying out of the office. “Then who did screw up?” he demanded. “You were the one with the dynamite, you were the one who planted it in the display right by the table that’d been reserved—”

  Ingram’s smal
l eyes narrowed into slits. “I set it for five minutes after the hour the reservation was made for. As agreed.”

  “You should have set it for ten minutes after the hour,” Stone retorted.

  “Then we should have agreed to ten,” Ingram countered.

  The argument was going nowhere. And even if it were resolved, it wouldn’t change anything, Stone thought darkly. He was supposed to be resting easy at this point, not find himself in the middle of a mess. Now everyone was waiting for him to head up a task force to investigate the bombing.

  Rumors were already flying right and left as to its origin. Some, like that bubbleheaded Brannigan woman, thought it might be the work of terrorists, while others thought it might even be a disgruntled club member, taking out his frustration. Still others thought it was the work of the Texas mob. Nobody even came close to the real reason and he meant to make sure it remained that way.

  The short fuse that comprised his temper insisted on lighting anyway. “Damn it, Ingram, it was your job to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen.”

  His nerves taut, Ingram’s face turned almost beet-red as he snapped, “I’m not God, boy.”

  Stone ran a narrow, almost artistic-looking hand through his hair, cursing roundly. The opportunity had passed. His target had left the grounds shaken, but unscathed. Which meant that everything he’d worked so hard to build up might be in jeopardy.

  If his connection to El Jefe ever came to light…

  Shaking his head, he forced the thought aside. Right now, he had a more immediate problem to deal with right here in his own backyard.

  The apology to Ingram nearly choked him, but he needed the man, now more than ever.

  With effort, he forced it out, then turned his attention to damage control.

  Pulling up in the driveway, right in front of the fire truck that the men had just finished cleaning after the ordeal at the country club, Tracy cheerfully announced to Adam, “This is your stop.”

  She’d gone more than a little out of her way to drop the firefighter at his station, but she didn’t mind. The drive over from the hospital would have been a silent one had she not kept up a steady stream of conversation. For all intents and purposes, it was more of a monologue than a conversation, garnering little more than grunts and one-word answers from the noble firefighter sitting in the passenger seat of her ’95 Mustang convertible.